Sweet Rock Flavor Of Mary's Danish

November 13, 1992|By ALAN SCULLEY Road Crew

Ask Mary's Danish singer Gretchen Seager about the group's 1991 album, "Circa," and you'll hear a mixed review. She's proud of the record, but she also said the band's kitchen sink approach to choosing songs for the record provided an important lesson.

One of the weaknesses, Seager said in looking back at "Circa," the group's followup to their 1989 debut "There Goes The Wondertruck," was the band let their eclectic tastes get the better of them.

"I think `Circa' could have been a much better album ... had we not put so many songs on it, it could have been a much more focused album, a much more conceptually together album representing Mary's Danish. Because the album was around so long we had the time to write a million songs for it, we wanted to put them all on,'' she said.

The error of this strategy became frustratingly apparent when the group went on tour to promote "Circa," Seager said.

"I think for us it came to a point later on the tour where we realized that everybody at one time or another during the live set felt alienated from the music, because they didn't write the song or they didn't have anything to do with it," Seager said. "As much as it (diversity) was a good thing, it kind of became a bad thing later on and people were feeling unsatisfied, creatively unsatisfied because they didn't love every song."

Against that backdrop, it's no surprise Mary's Danish's recently released third CD, "American Standard," is narrower in scope. Where "Circa" and "Wondertruck" careened between rocking pop, funk, thrash, country and other styles - all at varying degrees of intensity and tempos - the new CD takes a middle ground, emphasizing catchy hard rock (the songs "Killjoy" and "Underwater") and potent ballads ("The Living End" and "Ode To A Life").

The album was written last spring in the group's hometown of Los Angeles. The six members - vocalists Seager and Julie Ritter, guitarists David King and Louis Gutierrez, bassist Chris "Wag" Wagner and drummer James "JBJ" Bradley Jr. - settled into a loft downtown, and for the first time wrote together as a group.

"For this album I think we made a conscious decision to really focus in on the similarities in our musical tastes as opposed to the differences," Seager said. "For the first time we really thought about what kind of album we wanted to do. We'd never really done that before. It was just throw in the kitchen sink."

"American Standard" is more consistently hard rocking than the first two Mary's Danish records - a fact that may seem surprising considering it was produced (with assistance by engineer Niko Bolas) by Peter Asher, who's known for his work with Linda Ronstadt and 10,000 Maniacs.

"Morgan Creek (the group's record company) had the same reservations," Seager said. "We don't think Peter can do a rock record, and we were all laughing because Peter as our manager is the closest person to this band and is the closest person to our thinking process. So he knew exactly what we had gone through. He knew exactly what we wanted to accomplish, and all he wanted to do was help us to do it.''

INFO

* Mary's Danish and Darling Buds are to appear Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Lewis.' The show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 in advance, $6.50 at the door.